Gay in the NBA. An Advantage?

The announcement by journeyman NBA center John Amaechi that he is gay did not exactly leave the league reeling in shock and surprise. My favorite reaction was from Doc Rivers, who used to coach Amaechi.

So my guess is that Amaechi’s book, “Man in the Middle,” is not going to knock anyone off the best seller list any time soon. After all, we already know the big “reveal.” He’s gay. Whoops, did that spoil the ending?

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OK, now I’m worried. Mark Cuban is starting to make sense.

But the reaction has been fascinating. The latest to weigh in was Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who seems pathologically unable to keep from commenting on nearly everything. But you have to admit, this is a take you probably didn’t see coming.

Cuban said that coming out as an active (meaning in uniform right now) NBA player, “would be the best thing that ever happened to you from a marketing and endorsement perspective. You would be an absolute hero . . . ”

Maybe. And he’s right, there probably would be a groundswell of support from the estimated eight million gay and lesbian Americans, not to mention their friends and families. But it would still take a lot of guts.

Consider, if you would the column by Salt Lake Tribune columnist Steve Luhm, who decided to take as his topic last Thursday that, Amaechi was “one of the worst players in franchise history.”

Not that this is about him being gay, Luhm stressed. Luhm just thought that now, the day that Amaechi made his announcement, would be a good time to reflect on the career of a player who hasn’t been in a Utah uniform since 2003.

Right.

Luhm says Amaechi feuded with famously old school head coach Jerry Sloan. Gee, who’d have thought that? Amaechi says in his book that Sloan used homophobic slurs. Asked about it after the book was released, Sloan declined comment, although he pointedly did not deny the slurs.

Then there is Larry Miller, team owner, who was last in the news when he banned “Brokeback Mountain” from his movie theathers. Amaechi says Miller was a “bigot,” which probably has Miller high fiving his pals, because that’s pretty much the effect he was shooting for.

But there are some odd twists. For example, a gay man having problems in Salt Lake? That’s a surprise? But Amaechi makes a point to say that he actually had a very positive experience there in a “community with a large gay population.”

Really? Show of hands. How many thought that described Salt Lake?

And then, despite the attacks from “fair and balanced” fellows like Luhm, there are the testimonials from someone like Rivers, who called him “a great kid” who did “as much charity work in our city as anyone and he’s still doing it.”

The point being that I wonder how this bashing of Amaechi is going to work out. He seems to be a good guy, very popular in his native England, and not someone who made a lot of enemies in the league (with the exception of Sloan and Miller).

Cuban even weighed in on that point, that attacking Amaechi might backfire.

“If you’re the idiot who condemns somebody because they’re gay,” Cuban said, “then you’re going to be ostracized, you’re going to be picketed and you’re going to ruin whatever marketing endorsements you have.”

Cuban may be over-estimating America’s tolerance, but wouldn’t it be something if he’s right? I know Jerry Sloan would be surprised. Which, as far as I’m concerned, would be great.